The
beginning of Act II closely resembles the beginning of Act I. A nurse has just been murdered and the
Inspector is at the scene to investigate.
However, in Act I, the Inspector calls the physicist who murdered his
nurse a murderer and Sister Boll corrects him and insists on calling the
physicist an assailant and the murder an accident. In contrast, in Act II, the Inspector corrects
Fraulein Doktor when she says “murderer” and “murder” and seems pleased when
she corrects herself by saying “assailant” and “accident.” He has had quite a change of attitude from
his first appearance.
Another
instance of repetition occurs Newton admits his true identity to Mobius and
then Einstein reveals his identity. They
say almost the exact same things. Then
at the very end of the play, each physicist states him name, date and place of
birth, and a summary of his life. So we
have three different examples of repetition in The Physicists. In my
opinion, anything that happens three times is important. So what can we learn from these excerpts?
That’s a
tough question, and honestly, I’m not sure if I know the answer. It’s possible that all these occurrences are
not isolated events and have all happened more than twice. Although this play seems like it has a
definite beginning and end, we have no idea what the Inspector said when he
arrived at the “villa” to investigate the first death, and we don’t get to see
how the three physicists act once Fraulein Doktor has officially taken over the
facility. Maybe they will continue
speaking in similar ways, and maybe they won’t.
As the audience, we only get a little piece of the timeline.
One
possible reason of the repetition could be to illustrate that life is more of a
circle than a straight line. The phrase “history
repeats itself” comes to mind. One the other
hand, we could interpret the use of repetition as a way of showing how people
act like those around them. I would love
to hear other people’s ideas about the purpose of repetition!
Usually repetition of word(s) (anaphora) is used to emphasize something. In The Physicists, I thought it was used to emphasize the despair in the atmosphere. At the end with each of the physicists' monologues, I felt each of them becoming more pathetic and hopeless. Also, with each murder that came, you could see how Inspector Voss was losing his patience and finally didn't care about arresting the physicists. I think that's a sign of hopelessness if a police officer starts believing "I have discovered three murderers whom I can with an easy conscience, leave unmolested... Justice is a terrible strain (pg.65)"
ReplyDeleteAs far as repetition goes, I noticed something a step further out than the observations you made in your post. It wasn't just that things were happening in 3s, 3 was really being pushed in general. Not only was the same crime performed by 3 different men to 3 different nurses, but if you notice, Newton's crime was committed 3 months prior to the play. I'm not sure what the exact significance of 3 was, but it was definitely reoccurring.
ReplyDeleteAnother curious point that I noticed was the significance of "Mobius." In following the idea of the history repeating itself, I though of the Mobius loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip). So much could be drawn from that line of thinking, and love all of the speculation that we can do with it :D
Here are some videos explaining the Mobius strip a little better :)
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mdEsouIXGM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOLIB3cjFqw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iMI_uOM_fY
PS: ViHart is a self-declared "Mathemusician" who does a really good job of explaining math in a fun and interesting way, so I encourage everyone to check her videos out :)